


You Know That I Am Home

by Meskeet



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canonical Fake Character Death - Ana Amari, Families of Choice, Gen, Guest Starring The Amari Family Couch, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meskeet/pseuds/Meskeet
Summary: She knows what it means when the psychologist who does their mandatory annual evaluation gives a word association test, and when she says safe, Jesse doesn’t say home or mom or bed. Without missing a beat, he says Amari.From the start to the fall of Overwatch: five times Jesse wakes Ana at two-thirty in the morning, and although she's way too old for this, she's here anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to where credit is due, this fanart is what kicked off the idea of this fic: http://justthebones.tumblr.com/post/154612833061/saltdryad-area-woman-hasnt-stopped-crying-from
> 
> Thanks for Red_Tigress for being the cheerleader that she is, and all of you lovely Overwatch fans out there for keeping me writing. Feel free to check me out as justthebones on tumblr, where I generally reblog angsty things in various fandoms.

“ _Ya khara_ ,” is Ana’s first reaction, and she immediately checks to see if Fareeha’s at her elbow to tattle on her language. She’s not, so she feels secure to cross her arms and lean against the doorway, lowering her pistol and setting it on the counter beside her.

Jesse, new enough to Overwatch and by extension, Arabic, simply stares at her, mouth wide and eyes wider. “Ma’am,” he says, eyes flicking to the gun and back to her in a smooth motion. He probably means to say more, but what emerges is a cough and he chokes on whatever he’d thrown together for a two o’clock in the morning snack.

Ana isn’t even close to fluent in ‘ _chip on the shoulder cowboy’_ slang, but she can be gracious and chooses to wait for an apology until after he takes an enthusiastic gulp from the glass of water she slides across the table towards him.

While he recovers, she gives him the look that never fails to make Fareeha squirm. The pause tells her quite a bit. Dark eyes, darker circles under them – not to mention the split lip and stain across his nose. Not the typical issue training injuries. She’s not surprised Gabriel threw a spare set of keys his way, even if she’s not thrilled to find his boots on top of her kitchen table where the spurs will undoubtedly leave a mark behind.

“Peanut butter and aish baladi?” he chooses to see the frown on her face rather than the smile in her tone – Gabriel’s stray tenses his hand, entire body goes still, like a spooked cat considering the best way to use its momentum to clear any obstacles in its path and – _damn it, Reyes._ “We don’t keep things stocked here – that’s what the mess is for – but I can name three things healthier than that.”

“Is that what this is?” he asks, shifting slightly, but maybe a little less wary than a moment before, when his eyes had strayed again to her gun and to the door in the next moment. “Jus’ thought you wouldn’t miss one.”

Ana thinking longingly of her vacated bed, then of the four-thirty wakeup they’d planned for drills. Morrison would just have to accept her raincheck on this one.

“Come here,” she says, approaching the collection of snacks she kept for herself and Fareeha. “I will show you something better than peanut butter to pair with that.”

* * *

“Shhhhh!”

The hiss sends Ana rolling out of bed and onto her feet in an instant, gun off the nightstand and into her hand before the sound of the following giggle reaches her ears.

 _Fareeha_. Not in the initial distress she’d anticipated, but up to some sort of mischief at –

Two-thirty in the morning. Of course. Ana glares at the clock as though she can intimidate it into giving her a more reasonable hour to chase her offspring.

Carefully she places the gun back on the nightstand, covering a yawn. The ache of an hour of sleep and the crash of adrenaline hits her bones, enough to make her want to leave Fareeha up to whatever trouble she’d devised for tonight. Ana’s half-convinced that it’ll keep until the morning, but the low rumble of a scratchy voice is enough to make her reconsider.

Ana opens the door a crack, just enough to peer around the frame, and freezes.

Fareeha’s crouched in front of her, using the sofa as cover. Her left hand’s shoved into her mouth, shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping silent, and the other hand on the toy gun Morrison had given her two days after her last birthday when Ana was in the infirmary and Jack the commander of the mission that had landed her there.

Ana’s just about to leave the cover of her room when she sees the shadow creeping across the room. The steps are just a tad louder than they should be, and to her surprise, Fareeha seems to track the noise well enough.

There’s a small _ping_ as her projectile ricochets off Jesse’s nose, and the outlaw-turned-agent freezes for just a moment. Only a moment, however, because Fareeha follows her bullet and tackles him by the knees. McCree’s laughing too hard to fend her off, and his half-hearted attempts reward him with his own toy placed against his forehead.

“Pow,” Fareeha says solemnly, and although her daughter is facing the opposite direction, Ana knows a grin is splitting her face as she snatches the hat off Jesse’s head. Ana’s own smile slips, just slightly, when Jesse says, “I guess it runs in the family, huh?”

Fareeha’s reply is subdued by something that sounds all too much like a hastily-stifled yawn, which means the coast is clear for Ana to slip out of her quarters. It doesn’t matter that she makes no noise – Jesse’s eyes glimmer just slightly in the dim light, tracking her movements. He nods down to Fareeha, who’s gone from action to slumber in just a few minutes.

“Like her father,” Ana tells him softly as she approaches. Fareeha doesn’t stir in the slightest. “He used to wake at odd hours and do all manner of chores before going immediately back to sleep.”

“She was worried about you.”

“She’s her father’s daughter,” Ana agrees, pulling a blanket from the sofa the two of them are leaning against. She settles down on Fareeha’s other side, pulling the cover across the three of them and rescuing Jesse’s hat from her daughter’s head. “This is not the life I would have chosen for her,” she adds as Fareeha shifts just slightly.

“With all due respect, I don’t think any of us have much choice these days,” Jesse says, his yawn almost as poorly concealed as Fareeha’s.

Ana reaches over to tousle his hair with a fierce affection that takes her by surprise. Instead of giving voice to the emotion, she says, "Don't let Reyes pass on that attitude of his. We already have two doomsayers, we don't need a smaller version of the Commanders running around." 

She can't see his face, but the smile is clear in his voice. "Yes ma'am. I'll do my best."

* * *

“I had heard Widowmaker introduced herself to you, but we do have an infirmary if you need somewhere to bleed,” there’s no heat in Ana’s voice, even as she flicks on the lights to the living room. She's still not entirely certain what roused her, but she can't bring herself to feel any measure of surprise as a sour face glares back at her.

She’s grown better at deciphering _half-dead_ cowboy, which is why, when he immediately groans, she turns them off just as quickly as she switched them on.

“Angela had mercy on me and let me escape back to my own bed for the night,” Jesse slurs, voice thick with pain and meds and God knows what else. “Get it… Mercy?”

“That joke ceased to be clever the twentieth time the Commanders tried it out. I fail to see why you’re bleeding on my couch.”

"…didn’t mean to wake you.”

The apology is sincerely meant – he never means to wake her, but it happens anyway. Usually if it’s some sort of misadventure, Fareeha is the one to wake her. Her daughter, for all of her virtues, never has needed to learn the meaning of true stealth. Still, the fault can’t solely lie with her daughter on those nights – apparently, Jesse quietly bleeding on her sofa is enough to stir her.

She doesn’t think that he could sound more exhausted without talking in his sleep. As Ana completes a circuit from her room, to the kitchen, and back to her couch, she offers him a glass of water. Jesse takes it, hands shaking and spilling half of it before it even touches his lips. Her hands cover his without thought, steadying it until he can take a sip.

Better here than wandering around the Watchpoint like the ghost of John Wayne. Besides, if he was truly at risk of bleeding all over her furniture, Angela would have chained him to the infirmary bed.

“Thanks,” the word is painful, drawn out. His hands twitch slightly, battle nerves making themselves known. “Two of ours dropped from fire behind our line and I got distracted, let my guard down-”

“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupts. “Sleep, McCree. I’ll keep watch for the night.”

It shouldn’t be necessary – this is her home after all. But she knows what it means to go on one Blackwatch mission after another. She knows what it means to look over your shoulder, wondering if this is the mission when someone you think has your back decides to shoot at it instead. She knows what it means when the psychologist who does their mandatory annual evaluation gives a word association test, and when she says _safe_ , he doesn’t say _home_ or _mom_ or _bed_. Without a beat, he says _Amari_.

The words are scarcely out of her mouth when his eyes start to close. Ana goes to the kitchen, checks the time, sighs – then puts a pot of water on the stove to boil. It’ll be another night of missed sleep, but she doesn’t mind.

* * *

“Jesse McCree,” Ana can’t keep the exasperation out of her voice. She’d woken for a glass of water, mouth still dry from the desert heat of the mission she’d returned from only a few hours before. She had almost tripped when she left her quarters – not just from the exhaustion dragging down her every step, but also over the small pile of arms he’d left outside her door.

 “Captain,” the acknowledgement first, then the explanation. “I passed Commander Reyes in the hall.”

 “For the commander of a black ops division, he excels at spreading information he shouldn’t,” Ana snaps, too tired to hide her limp. Angela had stitched it on the return flight, but there isn’t much any of them can do but wait for her body to heal. These days, the process just takes a little longer.

 Jesse McCree looks almost as tired as she feels. She takes a second look at him – he’s grown from the gangly stray that Gabriel had dropped into her lap without warning. The long days and longer nights demanded by Overwatch have started to show on him, scars and prosthetics and the way he rubs at the joint of his remaining arm as he puts down the gun in front of him.

 “Didn’t expect you to wake up,” which is Jesse McCree for _you look as terrible as Gabe said and if my stealth is good enough for Blackwatch, it should be good enough to keep you asleep, damn it_. Perhaps she’s editorializing, just a little, because he adds, “Angela said she shot you up with enough to take out a herd of horses, let alone a fifty-year-old sniper.”

 “Forty-nine, ingrate,” as she limps by, she aims a light kick his way. He makes a face at her, picking up what seems to be the next rifle in line.

 Ana, almost into the shabby kitchen, turns onto her heel as the smell of ash and oil registers at last.

 “What are you doing, McCree?”

 He flashes her a quick grin, the one that always ends with him doing laps around the Watchpoint after Jack finds out what type of mischief he’s gotten up to. It fades then, stifled a little by the hour or the mission or something she’s too tired to conceptualize right now. “I figured our sawbones wouldn’t have given you the chance to clean before she locked you in here.”

 “If you use the wrong oil on my rifle, I’ll ensure Reyes receives Peacekeeper on the next mission and uses it as a club,” the threat is an empty one, and they both know it, but McCree still nods seriously in her direction.

 “Yes ma’am,” he says solemnly, pulling the cloth out of the barrel. It’s filthy, either a sign that Ana’s slipping in her old age or that she’d fired more than she ought to. “It’s just a matter of self-preservation. Don’t want your guns locking up when I need someone at my back.”

 She picks up a water bottle, considers throwing it at him, then reaches below to her cabinets. Ana groans, just slightly, as she settles next to McCree and passes the prepared mug over to him.

 He eyes it suspiciously and takes a sip. After a moment, he takes another, larger gulp of the whiskey laced coffee.

 “Pass me a rag,” she orders, and can’t quite conceal the quirk of her lips as Jesse produces a bandana.

 She falls asleep before she can finish the first one. When she wakes, it’s to the weight of a tattered red cape on her shoulders and a pile of rifles at her side.

* * *

“Come in, cowboy,” Ana doesn’t turn at the sound of the door opening, the once-hesitant footsteps entering with confidence born of familiarity. The noise pauses at Jesse rounds the corner and takes in the scene in front of him.

Fareeha doesn’t allow him much time for contemplation – on home from leave for the first time in a month, she bounds across the room and sweeps Jesse up in a hug. There’s a thud of impact, and Ana can’t quite conceal her laugh as she turns to see the force of Fareeha’s momentum send Jesse hurling into the wall. He laughs, sweeping Fareeha off her feet and ignoring her demand for him to let go.

When he doesn’t immediately comply, Fareeha sends him crashing to the ground.

“This is the thanks I get for taking out a Talon outpost?” Jesse asks plaintively from his position sprawled on the ground, hat fluttering down to rest beside him.

“Keep complaining and I’ll erase that commendation in your file,” Gabriel threatens, the tone of his voice enough to make any recruit quail.

Jesse stills for a just a moment, considers Gabriel’s presence then shrugs. “I recall you telling me that you’re the only one allowed to look at that.”

“I like to take it out and remind myself why I haven’t cut you loose yet. Grab yourself some popcorn and sit down,” only Gabriel could make that sentence sound like a death threat, but Jesse and Fareeha just exchange identical glances and raise their eyebrows in sync. Her daughter offers him a gracious hand off the floor, and Jesse uses it to pull her to the ground.

Scuffle complete, there’s a few moments of discussion about the movie choice – Jack, who had originally wanted a western quickly votes for something else once he acknowledges Jesse’s presence. Gabriel, distracted by the task of getting Fareeha in a headlock, votes for a romantic flick just to irritate Jack. Ana takes all of their opinions into account, then selects the vid Fareeha had chosen that afternoon.

Jack, who once slept through four hours of aerial bombardment after leaving Ana on watch, drifts off almost immediately on the floor with one of Fareeha’s spare pillows shoved under his head. It doesn’t take long for Fareeha to pester Gabriel into making hot cocoa for her, but the begging only keeps Jack safe for the time it takes for Gabriel to return from the kitchen.

Ana pulls her feet up onto the couch, leaving room for Jesse to sit on the floor in front of her. She carefully hides a smile behind her mug as Jesse and Gabriel compete for who can hit various points of Jack’s body with lobbed kernels of popcorn. Fareeha settles the issue by overturning an entire bowl on Jack’s head, and it’s to the sound of the resultant wrestling that Ana allows herself to drift into sleep.

* * *

Their quarters feel like a tomb.

Fareeha wraps her arms around her knees, pulling them tight to her chest. She’d returned immediately at Jack’s call, although there was nothing she could do here. She almost regrets rushing back – she could be training, could be running missions and keeping herself busy – but she doesn’t think she could leave if she tried.

 At the sound of the door opening, her head snaps up and she turns around so quickly her back cracks. For a moment, hope lightens her, fills her chest and then she takes in the bulky figure, the prosthetic arm, the hat tipped over eyes that are probably as red as hers.

She deflates immediately, letting her chin tip back on top of her knees. Jesse McCree pauses in the doorway, his hand tightening on the frame until the wood audibly cracks.

“Come in,” Fareeha says quietly, and he jumps with the same emotion that the door opening had provided her. He looks up, meets her eyes almost desperately, and for the first time, Fareeha hates the resemblance she shares with her mother, because it means she has to watch how he raises trembling hands to his face and his entire body quakes for just a moment.

He takes measured steps into the room, sinks down onto the sofa beside her. Jesse’s just close enough that she can feel the heat from his body but she doesn’t close the gap, doesn’t reach out to touch him.

Jesse reaches out after a long moment, one arm snaking around her shoulder but still refusing to look at her. He pulls her close, and she buries herself in the space between his side and his arm.

“I’m sorry, Fareeha,” he says, voice dry and hoarse and cracking under the strain just as they all are. “I looked until Gabriel came and dragged me back but – there’s nothing. No communication, no bl-”

He cuts himself off before she can. She won’t say it’s all right, because it’s not and it will never be. She’s not in Overwatch but she’s tired of losing people and for a moment, almost more than anything, wishes that she could go back to a time when her life made sense, before Gabriel and Jack screamed at each other over her mother’s missing body and Jesse had two arms and her mother was there to make hideous aish baladi and peanut butter combinations in the morning and –

“I couldn’t find anything, not a trace.”

“If you couldn’t find her, there was nothing to find,” Fareeha says and her voice is steady, as though the words don’t tear her to pieces with the finality of them.

Jesse doesn’t say anything, just pulls her a little tighter against his side, and together, they wait out the rest of the long night.  

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment below! Thanks for reading!


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